Politics

Romney campaign didn’t compile opposition research on Santorum before Iowa surge

Alex Pappas Political Reporter
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Rick Santorum’s surprise surge in the Republican presidential race caught frontrunner Mitt Romney’s campaign by such surprise that they hadn’t even compiled opposition research about the insurgent candidate in the days before the Iowa caucuses.

According to an account in “Inside the Circus” — a soon-to-be released eBook on the 2012 Republican race for president obtained by The Daily Caller — a Romney staffer realized just five days before the Iowa caucuses they didn’t have “oppo” on Santorum.

“Okay, let’s take a look at the Santorum book,” a campaign adviser is reported to have said in reference to the compilation of materials the campaign keeps on its opponents.

The adviser, according to the report, was stunned to hear the response from another aide that, “There’s no Santorum book.”

The Daily Caller obtained an advance copy of the new eBook, authored by Mike Allen and Evan Thomas, that comes out Tuesday.

The authors describe how “the Romney campaign relished going negative” and used “oppo” to extensively to go after rivals like Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Once Romney’s campaign realized that Santorum — who won the Iowa caucuses — posed a legitimate threat to the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign, “Romney oppo machine had cranked into gear.”

“By early January, the newspapers were full of stories pointing out that Santorum was a career politician who played the Washington game, a big ‘earmarker’ who brought home the bacon—hardly the anti-big-government outsider that conservative voters were looking for,” Allen and Thomas report in the book.

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